1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for holding sheet mediums and an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to a sheet medium holding device incorporated in an image forming apparatus such as a copy machine, a facsimile machine, a printer.
2. Description of Related Art
Heretofore, a paper sheet holding device, which is one of a sheet medium holding mechanism, is provided with a sheet stack portion for holding thereon a stack of recorded sheets and an upper and lower side rollers located right before the sheet stack portion in order to feed the recorded sheets one by one onto the sheet stack portion. Those upper and lower side rollers being rotated at a predetermined speed discharge a recorded sheet toward a predetermined position of the sheet stack portion. The discharged sheet is stacked there.
However, when another discharge of a recorded sheet is made after a predetermined volume of the recorded sheets are stacked on the stack portion, the top end of the sheet subsequently discharged hits against the ends of the stacked sheets, causing buckle or slide of the sheet, thus resulting in an irregular stack of the sheets. The higher-level stacked sheets may collapse and are scattered from the stack portion. On the other hand, the sheet stacking portion is desired to hold recorded sheets as much as possible.